Part 2 — BALLAD.

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BY J. R. LOWELL.

———

Gloomily the river floweth,

Close by her bower door,

And drearily the nightwind bloweth

Across the barren moor.

It rustles through the withered leaves

Upon the poplars tall,

And mutters wildly ’neath the eaves

Of the unlighted hall.

The waning moon above the hill

Is rising strange and red,

And fills her soul, against her will,

With fancies lone and dread.

The stream all night will flow as drearful,

The wind will shriek forlorn,

She fears—she knows that something fearful

Is coming ere the morn.

The curtains in that lonely place

Wave like a heavy pall,

And her dead mother’s pale, pale face

Doth flicker on the wall.

And all the rising moon about

Her fear did shape the clouds,

And saw dead faces staring out

From coffins and from shrouds.

A screech-owl now, for three nights past,

Housed in some hollow tree,

Sends struggling up against the blast

His long shriek fearfully.

Strange shadows waver to and fro,

In the uncertain light,

And the scared dog hath howled below

All through the weary night.

She only feels that she is weak

And fears some ill unknown,

She longs, and yet she dreads to shriek

It is so very lone.

Her eyeballs in their sockets strain,

Till the nerves seem to snap,

When blasts against the window-pane

Like lean, dead fingers tap.

And still the river floweth by

With the same lonely sound,

And the gusts seem to sob and sigh,

And wring their hands around.

Is that a footstep on the stair,

And on the entry-floor?

What sound is that, like breathing, there?

There, close beside the door!

Hush! hark! that was a dreadful sigh!

So full of woe, so near!

It were an easier thing to die

Than feel this deadly fear.

One of her ancestors she knew

A bloody man had been,

They found him here, stabb’d through and through,

Murdered in all his sin.

The nurse had often silenced her,

With fearful tales of him—

God shield her! did not something stir

Within that corner dim?

A gleam across the chamber floor—

A white thing in the river—

One long, shrill, shivering scream, no more,

And all is still forever!